Transcription
I am a career CIA operations officer, and as you mentioned, I was on joint duty assignment at the Office of Director National Intelligence's Directors Initiatives Group, or the DIG, between March 2025 and April 2026. I was responsible for leading the DIG's investigation into COVID origins, anomalous health incidents, and unidentified anomalous phenomena. I'm here today to discuss the COVID cover-up, the national security implications associated with the DIG's investigative findings, and CIA refusal to comply with lawful oversight, as well as how we remedy these problems.
Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident. Motives are difficult to define given the scope of the DIG's review. Intentional or not, the IC's actions resulted in cover-up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers. Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration.
Dr. Fauci's role in the cover-up was intentional. Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with the conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health, health officials, and scientists. This included some of the authors of the paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" and other public health experts who have been in his orbit for the last 20-plus years. Some of the scientists were part of the Biological Sciences Experts Group, or the BSEG, an office and an Office of Director National Intelligence advisory body whose members often receive considerable funding from NIAID and public health agencies. The BSEG scientist influenced national laboratory WMD research policy decisions, finished analysis, and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counterintelligence issues.
Since 2006, the BSEG consulted part-time on biodefense issues for the IC while conducting government-funded research and holding academia positions, as well as maintaining roles in public health institutions, and serving as members in the National Academy of Science. They received funding from NIAID and other agencies for vaccine research, USAID's PREDICT project, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, and even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines. There was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years. In fact, several of the BSEG scientist helped Dr. Fauci rewrite definitions of gain of function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research. Still others participated in event in planning Event 201 in 2019. This was a coronavirus pandemic tabletop exercise curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it was attended by Dr. Fauci and individuals with IC ties like former DNI Avril Haines.
The CIA and DNI analytical managers responsible for examining the origin of COVID made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring the theory of zoonosis or a natural origin. Following the CIA's COVID relook that culminated in 2023, the CIA retaliated against analysts supporting the lab leak hypothesis. CI analysts were not bribed. The analysts that supported the 2023 lab leak conclusion took every administrative measure available to them to address their deep concerns regarding the analytic integrity of their finished intelligence. CIA managers retaliated against them for their refusal to agree with management's middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite of the analysis which changed the assessment to a non-call judgment.
Dr. Anthony Fauci's influence over the IC's COVID origin analysis and the witting and unwitting role some BZ scientists and IC personnel played in the cover-up exposed why this issue is of deep concern. Failure to address the United States government's inability to differentiate between public health and biodefense and the oversight-resistant ecosystem of life science actors has been fertile ground for increasingly dangerous continental United States gain-of-function research, as well as similar research conducted in US government-supported labs abroad.
Post-9/11 changes in public health and biodefense roles and responsibilities have blurred the lines between scientists, the military, and the intelligence community. It has resulted in a deliberately opaque and excessively redundant biodefense research policy and financial infrastructure seemingly intended to escalate bureaucratic bloat. This is a national security crisis caused by the inability to provide real oversight. The systematic failures associated with muddled boundaries between biodefense and public health and an overly complex infrastructure have been exacerbated by documented efforts to circumvent oversight.
CIA did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIG's investigation. The behavior significantly impacted Director Gabbert's implementation of several EOs issued during this administration and tasked to the DIG. The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytic standards at the CIA were violated. The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers. These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence. One CIA contractor assisting with the DIG's investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG. When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MK-Ultra files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbert. The legislative and executive branches will continue to be misinformed if this type of behavior is not addressed.
The partial solution to dangerous gain-of-function has already been laid out in Executive Order 14292, improving the safety and security of biological research. We need a comprehensive review of government-funded life science research and a move back to pre-9/11 definitions of gain-of-function and WMD research, particularly in the IC and DHS. More broadly, we need effective oversight. We must hold agencies responsible for failure to comply with Executive Order 14292, and oversight must have teeth. You must be willing to pull the purse strings and, if necessary, convene another Church Committee.
The results of our investigation would have been impossible without whistleblowers willing to come forward. They are indispensable agents for reform. Despite statutory law, agency regulation, and training requirements, whistleblowers are almost never protected. Whistleblower protections always seem to protect the agency. Every time the CIA investigates itself, they coincidentally find no wrongdoing. When they do identify issues, they hold the system responsible. That last statement is a verbatim response from a Europe and Eurasia Mission Center lawyer when the CIA Office of Inspector General did identify shortcomings so serious oversight bodies were holding meetings about it 3 years after the events transpired. It was in response to the question, "Was anyone held accountable?" Apparently, the system is good enough. The only way we solve this issue is with real accountability for failure to comply with executive and legislative branch oversight and an escape valve where whistleblowers can continue to contribute to mission free from retaliation. All IG elements need to be removed from the agencies and fall under a separate entity controlled by the IC Inspector General. The personnel and IG elements should be 1811 certified with regular DOJ and legislative oversight reporting responsibilities.